Santa's Coming to Town

 A friend of ours had Santa come over to his house for an hour or so, so that our kids could have some nice one on one time with Santa. Abigail as you can see was a HUGE fan of Santa.

  Who does not love the screaming baby with Santa picture!?! They are the best!!!

 This Santa was legit.

 He was so sweet. He asked the kids all sorts of questions.

 And even got them laughing.

I don't think we have ever gotten the perfect Santa family picture, but we have spent lots of years trying.

 These are some of my friends that were there.

This is one of Matt's bros - Matt.  Love this guy!!

My favorite part of the night was these two videos 1 and 2 of us singing to Santa before he left. Abbie was going to town and LOVED the singing part.

Gingerbread Houses

 Time to get this blog back to Christmas and our fun activities in attempts to build our family unity and family traditions. Thanks to a tip from a friend of mine - I bought a few of the Halloween House decorating kits that were on sale post Halloween for like $2.  She told me that is what she buys and uses to decorate for their Christmas houses - BRILLIANT!! We thought it would be fun to have Grandma and Grandpa to join in our fun and it was!! It is fun to see everyone's personalities come out in their houses. 

 Abbie's favorite part was eating all the candy we were throwing at her to keep her content while we made our "masterpieces."

 Grandma and Hayden partnered up and Grandma was so sweet to let her help with construction and decorating. And no Bonnie had not just climbed out of bed nor was she trying to make a fashion statement - she was actually very smart and wore her rob as a protection for her clothes.

 Hayden's and Grandma's houses.

 My houses with Santa on his sled and a neighborhood pond.

 Hayden's and Bonnie's from above.

 Carter's house that he did 100% on his own. I am sad I didn't take another picture because he kept working on his long after we were done. He LOVED this project!!

Grandpa seemed to really get into it as well.  I love to see his own unique and fun way that he does things and interacts with the grandkids.

And here are Matt's houses.

This was a very fun project to do with the family and I definitely learned a few things that will help in the future. The #1 thing being: no one wants to eat the actual house so to save time and stress hot glue the houses together the night before to be right ready to decorate on the actual day with out having just gone through all the frustration of getting them put together with the frosting.  So yes, one more thing to add to the Family Tradition Holiday list: Gingerbread Houses!!

Playdate, Cousins and Tramp = FUN

 On Friday we had a playdate with our two handsome boy cousins Elway

 and Dade who is at most times a super hero. This kid likes to dress up and pretend to be a super hero more than any other kid I have met.

 And whenever they are together they are a bunch of crazies!!

 Abbie LOVES to wear these beads around her neck and thanks to Grandma Karen we have a ton of them she can wear.

 My favorite part of the day was when we went out to the tramp. I honestly thought we would be on there for a minute or two at least with the babies wanting to come off right away. Boy was I wrong!! Elway was IN LOVE!!  The word "whoa" was non-stop coming out of his mouth in his deep, husky voice.

 It was so hard to try to get good shots of these kids between the bouncing and kids jumping right in front of the camera or the kid I am trying to shoot or the kid falling right as I snap the picture. It was a fun challenge. I didn't  

 Poor kids, I asked them to open their eyes. They tried, but that sun was pretty bright.

 This little boy is just so stinkin adorable!! He is about to say "whoa" here which was just cracking me up!!

 

Here are two videos of the kids jumping on the tramp: 1 and 2.

Home from School

 I'm taking a quick break from Christmas posting to post some pictures from 2 days ago. By the time Carter gets off the bus a door down from us in the afternoon the girls are pretty stir crazy so we generally get all of us bundled up and get out the door a few minutes before the bus arrives to let the girls get some wiggles out. 

 On this particular day since it was bright and sunny I decided to take my camera with us and snap a few pics of the kids since pictures always turn out better outdoors. I am just so in love with Abbie these days. Except for the times that she is incessantly crying, she just cracks me up all the time.  I can just look at her and giggle.  Her expressions whether goofy or serious are just so humorous to me because they all express so much. She is all about being like her big siblings these days. Carter had the I Pad sitting with his legs out stretched on the couch last night.  She took one look at him, snagged my phone and plopped herself down on the couch with her legs out stretched.  She seemed pretty pleased with herself.

 I definitely chose the right day to pull out the camera!! Some days Carter gets off the bus and he is pretty tired or maybe had a long day and is kinda grumpy, but this day he was all smiles and so happy to see us!!

 Looks like he must have had a good day.

 I left Abbie on our driveway to quickly snag some pictures of Carter getting off the bus and she was NOT pleased to get left behind. She loves to wave at the bus and the bus driver and always gets excited when Big Brother Carter is crossing the road towards her.

 Carter was extra sweet to give Hayden a little time and push her around in her car for a moment.

 But my Hayden will still be Hayden which means her emotions are always very close to the surface.

 Luckily, we were able to turn that frown upside down in a hurry!! Drama avoided, whew!!

 For snack we had some left over frosting we needed to use up from Birthday cupcakes so we did graham cracker frosting cookies.  The kids really enjoyed them. Abbie like with most food these days, could not get her fill!!

This girl is just so adorable and beautiful!!

Lately Matt, the kids and I have been watching our videos on you tube and loving them.  When I took so many videos when Carter was young, I wondered if I was going a little over kill. Now at this point looking back I see there is no such thing as too many videos.  I haven't been as good to take videos of Hayden and Abbie so I am trying to remedy that.

Here is a typical evening at our house.

Here is a little more of that craziness. I just love hearing their laughter!!

When we watch Carter's video's of him when he is younger we love hearing how cute his voice is and how funny his words are. So now we are trying to get more videos of Hayden's voice like this one.

Carter is learning to read and getting so good at it. He has such a great mind in that head of his. I took this video of him reading to me last night. These moments are so precious to me. I had tears coming down my face I was so proud of him and love him so much.